Outline some of the issues that Facebook has faced in its international expansion. What would you suggest to Zuckerberg as potential solutions to these problems - Case Study Example

Issues that Facebook has faced in its international expansion and potential solutions to these issues Facebook is a social network site that connectspeople and has grown into popularity among members of the society. Its existence, like that of any other enterprise, has faced diversified challenges and I, in this paper, outline some of the challenges that the media has faced and recommend potential solutions to these issues. Competition is one of the major challenges that Facebook has faced since its launch.

Its venture as a social network has faced stiff competition from other social sites such as Friendster, MySpace, and Orkut. It had to face embrace competition as a new entrant in the social media and continued to face competition along its lifetime. Other players such as MySpace have for example commanded a significant segment of the social media users. In the year 2006, Facebook commanded 12 million users as compared to 43 million users that MySpace had and 36 million users that Friendster had.

MySpace also outshined Facebook in the cumulative period that its users spent on the site per day. While it reported an average of two hours per day per user, Facebook only reported about an hour per day per user. Facebook has similarly faced competition from new entrants into the social media business such as Twitter. Technology companies such as Google have also launched competitive products to the services offered by the social media players (Stanford Graduate School of Business 3, 8). Facebook has also faced challenges over user’s privacy, especially in its earliest years when members had to register by their official names and provide personal details that had to be verified.

This compromised users’ privacy and led to physical and social fears. There were for example fears over provision of physical addresses and use of offered details by potential employers and academic institutions to screen potential applicants. There have also been instances of users’ protests over new products that Facebook has introduced. The “News Feed” and “Mini Feed” features that publish users’ updates for general viewing triggered uproar as some people felt that their updates should be private and only accessible to their approved friends.

Further protests were realized with the Beacon application that published information from other networks on Facebook users’ profiles. Competent personnel to meet the organization’s objective have been another challenge and have previously forced Facebook to poach employees from other organizations such as Google. The organization has also faced a number of lawsuits over its ownership and this has challenged its net value (Stanford Graduate School of Business 4- 11). The article identifies competition, privacy, revolts, lack of competent personnel and litigations as the organization’s major challenges.

Zuckerberg, the Facebook, owner should therefore devise a method for recruiting competent employees, among top college graduates and nurturing the employees’ potentials and competence to its desirable human resource capacity. He should also promote a creative and innovative culture for development of new brands of products towards competitive advantage. In order to avoid users’ protest over the organization’s product, Facebook should test its products among users under an optional application and monitor users’ feedbacks besides allowing users to adapt to a new feature before it is launched.

Zuckerberg should however rely on advice from legal and sociology experts regarding privacy and legal issues that may arise from the organization’s ventures. Facebook has therefore faced diversified challenges throughout its life but these challenges can be resolved by managerial initiatives. Works cited Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Facebook in 2011.” Stanford Graduate School of Business. December 15, 2011. Web. April 9, 2013. < https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/cases/documents/E406.pdf>.